Don't look now, but the Wizards have won just four of their first 14 games, and two of those victories have come against the Sixers. The Wizards, you might recall, won 19 games last season; the Sixers won 56 and went to the NBA Finals.

Never mind that the Sixers' Allen Iverson scored a game-high 40 points. This was reminiscent of the early days of Iverson's dynamic career, when he would put up imposing numbers and his team would get rocked. Whatever the Sixers did wrong in Sunday's loss in Toronto seemed to carry over, like some insidious wave of ineptitude.

The Sixers gave up 25 points on 21 turnovers, and despite pressing, forced a modest 10 turnovers by the Wizards. And while the Sixers finished with a 45-36 advantage on the glass, center Dikembe Mutombo - their best rebounder - took just five and never really got involved on either end of the floor.

"We played like a bunch of strangers on both ends,'' Brown said. "We're not playing like a team on either end. There's no aggressive defense, no continuity on offense. We had 16 assists, and that's like average. Can't have that. Can't have 16 assists and 21 turnovers. That's why we shoot such a low percentage. We don't create turnovers and allow ourselves to get easy baskets. Offensively, we're just out of sync.